


One Traveller

by thealphagate_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-28
Updated: 2006-03-28
Packaged: 2019-02-02 02:19:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12717711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thealphagate_archivist/pseuds/thealphagate_archivist
Summary: There is no map of the human heart, and there is no single road through the wood.





	One Traveller

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the archivists: this story was originally archived at [The Alpha Gate](https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Alpha_Gate), a Stargate SG-1 archive, which began migration to the AO3 in 2017 when its hosting software, eFiction, was no longer receiving support. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are this creator and it hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Alpha Gate collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thealphagate).

One minute they were two guys, watching hockey with the scattered remnants of a Saturday afternoon's downtime all around them, and the next he was straddling Jack's thighs, opening Jack's surprised mouth with his tongue, kissing him hard enough to taste blood. A small, recessed part of him was surprised; not that there was this between them, but that he'd actually done something, risked the distance and the no-man's land and growing walls and launched this final, furious onslaught.

Jack, after all, was the warrior. He was the scholar. He ignored the gun calluses on his hands, the way they caught and held the fine hairs at the nape of Jack's neck. He concentrated instead on the low, hungry throb of noise the came up from his belly, on how it found an answering growl in Jack.

Jack's hands clutched his nape, his ass, hard enough to bruise and it felt so goddamned good, felt realer than anything he'd felt in weeks, in months. Before, he'd been the shell, all echo, but this was the ocean rushing in, surging hard and furious between them.

A drowning-tide, with two men gasping and striving, rolling off the couch and onto the floor, bodies tangled and half-naked. He moaned, low, at the feel of a hard hand on his dick. He curled up, kissed Jack's sweated, straining face, licked the line of salt along the jaw, bit it with feral teeth, with a hunger unassuageable. He reached out, passion-blind, found Jack, joined their hands and bodies and then kissed him hard as he could, pushed and pulled and wrung completion from himself, then Jack.

Kissed him softer, sweeter in the aftermath, gentling him even as their breath evened, steadied.

Jack's mouth was soft on his jaw, on his ear, and he rolled them to their sides, keeping his face buried. "Daniel."

"Jack."

"That can't ever happen again." and Jack's voice was raw, broken. Daniel tasted blood all over again.

)0(

He buried his face in the sweaty curve of Daniel's throat. "Daniel," he said.

"Jack." Daniel's hands were soft along his body, hard palms and fingertips setting up a sweet, teasing friction. 

"That can't ever happen again," he whispered, choking on it. This was ... right, but wrong place, wrong time, wrong planet. But it was still right, and if Daniel called him on it he'd be lost ...

Daniel's hands slowed, stilled. "Why not?" and it was *that* voice, *that* tone. The one that had challenged and pushed him and driven him crazy since day one. The one that took the line in the sand and turned it into ... poetry, philosophy, puns for all Jack could figure.

He pulled back, just far enough, and Daniel's eyes were wide and glazed, still dark to the edges of the blue-grey irises. Deep enough to fall into. "Because this ... this'll fuck with my judgement and I can't afford that." Jack wanted to fall, wanted to roll Daniel back and make him moan, make him say dirty things in every single language he knew. 

Daniel blinked once, a little sleepily, shivered despite the heat of the fire. "That is such bullshit, Jack," he said, and he sounded so damn reasonable, almost condescending. "I mean, I'm sure you really believe that, but. God. Bullshit, all the same."

Jack sighed, dropped his head back down onto Daniel's soldier, and knew that this was getting even further away from him than he had anticipated.

)0(

Daniel felt frayed and tattered and pretty goddamned miserable, cross-legged and half-dressed in front of the fire. "Like this ... this *thing* between us hasn't been here, all this time, hasn't made everything on the edge of fucked up for months now?" he said incredulously. "Like we haven't been ... biting and snapping for months now because of it? How the hell could it be any *worse* than it already is?" he demanded.

Jack growled, "Christ, Daniel!" then stood up and paced into the kitchen. He came back with two bottled waters, handed one to Daniel. "It could be a hell of a lot worse," he said finally, after a long silence. "I could let my feelings colour my judgement," and Daniel snorted, but Jack ignored it, kept on. "I could take stupid risks when I shouldn't, or not take them when I should. I could be found out and court-martialed. It could screw up the team dynamic even worse than it already has. I could ... lose myself in you," Jack admitted, and his voice was all darkness and void, like the thinness of space, and the chill of it. Daniel looked in his eyes and saw nothing there but despair; it made him want to crush the plastic bottle in his hands, made him want to weep.

"It's not such a bad thing, getting lost," he replied at last. "I got lost, and look what I found." He met Jack's eyes, held them though his vision swam and blurred. With a curse Jack closed the carefully balanced distance between them, cupped his hands around Daniel's face, thumbs smoothing across his eyes. Daniel thought he might have touched Charlie like this. And Sara. And him.

"It's not a bad thing," Jack agreed. "But I can't do that, not again. Not like this. I haven't got it in me, not anymore." His hands dropped away, and Daniel's skin burned at the loss, frost fire along his nerve endings. He shivered, despite the heat of the fire at his back, the heat of the man at his side. "But I do love you," Jack said quietly. 

Daniel shivered again.

)0(

Jack curled around Daniel, rocking slightly, a body-memory of comforting. "I do love you," he repeated, promised. He'd learned that much, after Sara. He'd learned to say it.

Daniel just shook his head at him. "But you're afraid to." Daniel's hands were up under his sweatshirt, touching him everywhere, distracting the hell out of him. He considered getting up, getting some water, doing anything to give himself some breathing room, but he couldn't make himself let go. Not after wanting to hold on for so long, so very much.

"Well, yeah," he said at last, stung into sharpness. "Hell, yeah. Only an idiot wouldn't be. Love is fucking *scary*. It's not eighth grade spin the bottle, here, Daniel, or Ten Minutes Of Heaven in the closet with little Danny-Sue, you know? It's breaking just about every rule there is, it's risking everything we've already got, and there's nothing saying either of us will make it out alive. How's that for a fucking threat assessment?"

Daniel's hands shifted up, drifted over his nipples, down the centre of his breastbone. "I had Sha'uri for one year. If I had known what was to come ... I'd have still taken that year," Daniel said at last. "Would you have not had Charlie, would you have given up on Sara, if you'd known ahead of time?" and it was that voice, the other voice, the soft one the slipped in and stole reason. 

"That's not fair, Daniel. That's not goddamned *fair*," Jack said, pulling away, apart. 

Daniel reached over, took his chin, pulled him in and kissed him until his breath was broken into sighs. "What is fair, Jack?" and he sounded like he really wanted to know.

So did Jack.

)0(

Daniel watched Jack's face, watched him lick the taste of their kiss from his lips. "Nothing," Jack said at last. "Nothing is fair. And this ... this isn't fair to either one of us, but I can't accept any other answer. I can't have *this*, and survive it. I really don't think I can, Daniel." His eyes were dark, pleading. 

"I have every reason to love you. What I lack is the unreason," Daniel replied, finally, dredging up a half-remembered quote. "So? This doesn't happen ever again. Does that mean, ah, it never happened in the first place?" He looked at his hands, proud at how steady they were, how even his voice was. Proud that he hadn't hurled his water bottle at Jack's obstinate head.

Jack gripped the back of his neck, pulled him in and kissed the top of his head fiercely. "That would be the smart thing, yeah. But smart was never one of my strong suits. It mentioned that on all my report cards, right after "does not play well with others". I don't want to pretend that ... I don't want this. I'm a bastard, sometimes, but not a lying one, you know?"

Daniel laughed bleakly, turned his head to kiss the cupped palm. "In general, no, not a lying one," he agreed. "In the bigger scheme of things, at any rate. So where do we go from here?"

)0(

Jack felt like he was going to puke from the butterflies in his gut. More like a flock of the motherfuckers that bit Teal'c, by the feel of it. "Good question. Damn good question." His palms were sweaty and he hadn't been this rattled since the night he got up the nerve to ask Sara to marry him. And that, at least, he'd been planning on.

This was ... so outside the plan he was pretty sure they'd slid into another universe.

Daniel shrugged. "I guess ... we take it as it comes. Keep it discreet, keep our heads down, our hands to ourselves in public and take our year, or ten, or lifetime ... whatever we're lucky enough to get." 

Jack shook his head. "You're a brave son of a bitch, Daniel. Crazy, too, but brave," he said at last. "Bugfuck crazy, really." He stood, held out his hand. "Well, we take each day as it comes. Fine. What comes next?"

Daniel smiled at him, slow and languorous, and Jack felt it in his belly, in his balls. "Right, Check. Bed. What was I thinking?" He took Daniel's hand, hauled him to his feet, leaned in and kissed him hard and wet and messy. Scary, but good scary, maybe.

Time would tell.

)0(

Daniel let Jack fuss about, giving him leftovers and searching for a coat he could wear home because it was later than he'd expected to stay, and even though he just wanted to be gone it was still ... oddly endearing to watch. A different Jack from what most people saw, or from what most people expected. Mother-hennish in a manly, career military sort of way. An alternate universe Jack. A stray, random thought came to him, and he smiled a little.

Jack paused, peered at him. "What? What?"

Daniel just shrugged. "Just got to thinking about the quantum mirror."

Jack appeared distinctly non-plussed, ran his hand over his wildly cow licked hair. "And this brings on a warm happy because?"

Daniel thought how to explain, smiled again. "Just that ... for a road not taken, there might somewhere be a road taken. That somewhere, I'm not going home in the rain and you're not sleeping here alone, and it's ... comforting. A little. To think that."

Something in Jack's face softened, lightened at that. "Yeah, okay. Lucky bastards," but he was smiling, almost. Daniel had his hand on the knob, but Jack stopped him, kissed him once, sweetly, on the mouth. "In all those universes, Jack loves Daniel," he said, softly, and then Daniel was walking to his car and Jack was watching and it wasn't what it could be, but it was perhaps better than it had been. 

)0(

At the door to the bedroom, Daniel paused, and Jack stopped, watched him, saw him shiver. "What?"

"I was just thinking," Daniel said, and he sounded ... lost, bewildered. "About the quantum mirror, about all those other worlds, the ones where this never happens. Where one of us is dead, or we never met, or you ... and I ... and I went home alone, and you went to bed alone."

Jack felt something cold curl in his belly, felt something like pity for all the other O'Neills and their empty beds. He pulled Daniel in, kissed him, breathed him in, knew that he would never be able to untangle their worlds now. Knew that it could be as much the unmaking of him as the making. He kissed Daniel again, sweetly, let the chill dissolve in the blissful heat of wanting and being wanted and didn't give a damn.

In all those universes, Jack loved Daniel.

In this one, he got to live it.

End

Story notes: The story is taken from reading this poem, and of course the ageless question of the reasons for and against...

The Road Less Taken 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,   
And sorry I could not travel both   
And be one traveller, long I stood   
And looked down one as far as I could   
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

Then took the other, as just as fair,   
And having perhaps the better claim,   
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;   
Though as for that, the passing there   
Had worn them really about the same, 

And both that morning equally lay   
In leaves no step had trodden black.   
Oh, I kept the first for another day!   
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,   
I doubted if I would ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh   
Somewhere ages and ages hence:   
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I -   
I took the one less travelled by,   
And that has made all the difference. 

Robert Frost

For Destina and 'zoot most especially.


End file.
